I’ve never really been one to follow diets or weight loss gimmicks – so I’m a little surprised at myself. I’m trying something new in previously uncharted Doublewide territory.

I’m allowing an electronic gizmo on my phone – an app – to tell me what to do.

This magical little receptor is helping me get healthy, or so they say. It receives information that I feed it, calculates all my points, calories, fat, binomials, monomials, pie charts and the like, and then fusses at me if I veer off course. I mean, who’s the boss here? With one flick of my thumb I could obliterate this little fitness fiend.

I hold up a jelly donut in defiance.

“You’ve exceeded your fat grams today” it tells me. “What’s that in your hand?”

“It’s a donut and I’m not sorry!” I sass back. I feel like I’m getting ready to duel this thing to the death.

I haven’t lived with my mother in years, but I find myself hiding from my phone like a kid who’s about to get into big trouble. I peek out from my spot behind the ‘fridge.

My husband bemoans something he ate in a weak moment and I say, “it’ll be ok – just don’t tell the app.”

A lot of help I am.

My little fitness pal does give me break once in awhile. It calculates my steps and grants me more calories as my exercise increases. It’s kinda like getting an E for effort.

Bacon, oh how I miss you. I see a cheat day on my horizon. (I’m not telling the app)

It’s really ok to have a cheat meal once in awhile when you’re dieting. You just don’t want to make it a habit. I’m certainly not an expert, but I think you have to treat yourself sometimes to keep the motivation up.

Just don’t go overboard with it – you don’t want to undo all you’ve achieved in the first week. I started doing all this healthy stuff to support my husband who’s trying to lower his cholesterol and it’s really not all that bad. I recommend the buddy system- it can help make the journey almost fun.?

I’m not sure the app would approve of the buddy system, though. Its M-O is more like “divide and conquer”… or duel to the death.